News headlines in 2011, page 8

In Dundo village in Nyankpala district, Northern Ghana, 10 women are busy weeding a rice field on a piece of land donated to them by the village chief.

The Taliban have destroyed schools, bombed music shops and carried out gruesome executions in Pakistan’s territories bordering Afghanistan. But what they may never be forgiven for is the destruction of ancient shrines where revered Sufi mystics are interred.

Ever since being elected earlier this year, Haitian President Michel Martelly and his team have been betting Haiti's reconstruction on foreign investors.

Transvestites and transsexuals in Argentina, who were among the most marginalised minority populations, have seen respect for their rights grow in recent years, especially since same-sex marriage became legal in this country a year and a half ago.

'Haiti is open for business.' That's what President Michel 'Sweet Micky' Martelly said at a recent ceremony as he and former U.S. president Bill Clinton laid a cornerstone for a giant industrial zone being built in northern Haiti.

When Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin briefed reporters recently, he offered some biting criticisms of the growing political manipulation of the most powerful body at the United Nations: the 15-member Security Council.

Margarita Amabeja holds out her hands full of golden rice grains and rough brown manioc roots - the first results of a strategy to adjust the agricultural cycles to the seasonal floods and droughts in the vast plains of Beni, in northeastern Bolivia.

Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical found in strong plastics, is banned in baby bottles in Canada and the European Union. But Mexico has made no move to outlaw it from plastic bottles or the lining of food cans, despite the threat to health.

Duduzile Sibanda takes a break from preparing her long stretch of land for her maize crop in rural Mberengwa, in Zimbabwe’s Midlands province. She wipes her brow under the scorching sun and looks upwards. The sparse clouds are a cause of concern as she studies the sky and wonders aloud when the 'heavens will weep.'

In a country which houses 21 of the world’s 100 most polluted cities, outcry over official underplaying of pollution is escalating as residents refuse to take government readings of the problem at face value.